'It was a lot of shots': 911 calls from UNC Charlotte shooting describe campus in chaos

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – Students whispering into phones and hiding
behind barricaded doors. Panicked parents calling on behalf of
their children, feeding information from text-message updates.
Faculty members requesting help, unsure whether their
classrooms could be the next target.

The four-dozen 911 calls placed in relation to the University
of North Carolina at Charlotte shooting Tuesday s
moments after a gunman wielding a pistol opened fire in a large
lecture hall, killing two people and injuring four more.

Student Riley Howell, , died not far from a professor
who called to report the shooting seconds later.

"A student went out to make a copy, and he came running in
saying he saw people bleeding," she told one of several 911
operators fielding calls about the shooting. "I have a room
full of students ... these doors don't lock ... look, we need
help."

Mourners pause to look at a variety of memorials left at
Kennedy Hall at UNC Charlotte on Thursday, May 2, 2019. A
gunman opened fire at Kennedy on April 30, killing two and
wounding four.

Several of the 911 calls came from faculty members working in
buildings close to Kennedy Hall, where police say entered a room during an anthropology lecture and
began shooting. One male teacher told an operator that he could
see students running around all over campus from his window but
that he hadn’t been alerted of an emergency by the university.

“We don’t really know the status of anything,” he said.

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Looking for information

That was the case for about a dozen parents who called 911
asking for updates or trying to relay information they’d
received in text messages.

One man called to tell police that his daughter was hiding in
the bathroom of the Chick-fil-A in the student union. There,
she was taking shelter with her roommate and with members of
the fire department providing first aid to one of the shooting
victims.

“She’s hiding in a bathroom right now,” the man told the
operator, talking about his daughter. “The fire department is
with the girl who was shot there, and they’re hiding her, too.”

Though many of the calls came from people who had witnessed
only the panic and not the shooting, a handful of student
callers were able to identify the suspect, describing his light
skin, dark hair, black clothes and the pistol with which he was
armed.

One of the callers told an operator she had escaped from the
class in which the shooting unfolded.

“It seemed like he was shooting at one person,” she said. “It
was a lot of shots. He was still shooting when we left.”

For those students who weren’t close to the shooting, only text
messages and the shouts of others informed them of what was
happening. One such caller told an operator he was in the
library – located just across the street from Kennedy Hall –
when he learned of the shooting.

“I was sitting at the computer when someone came in yelling,
and I ran,” he said. “I didn’t even see who yelled it. I just
got up and ran.”

Some of the people who called 911 to report the shooting didn’t
even have that much information.

One woman who called on behalf of her sister, who was hiding
and unable to call for herself, cried as she tried to pass her
sister’s location on to the operator. During their discussion,
she received a troubling text.

“Oh gosh; she said people are running outside in the hallway,”
she told the operator just before breaking down and sobbing.

As she was still on the line, the operator got word that
Terrell, 22, had been taken into custody. She told the woman on
the other end that her sister was no longer in danger.

“Thank you,” the woman said, struggling to get the words out
between sobs.

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